like dreaming of angels
by saltzmans
Summary: Their love is over before the sun has risen in the east—siriusremus.


**notes | **this is for caz. i miss you incredibly so please accept this angsty wolfstar as my apology. ily xoxo

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**1:00am**

From far away all they seem to be are boys - barely past their wasted teenage youth - and they're lying in a bed and their arms are wrapped around each other and there's a sort of safety which is whispered through the hands gripped loosely around thighs and lips pressed against the curve of necks.

But looking closer their bodies are tense - coiled, ready to spring - and the nails are digging in just a little too a hard - (hard enough to leave crescent moons in a pale sky) - and there's a heat which radiates off the sleeping bodies, telling tales of nightmares, the past and secrets which hide underneath the bed.

Tonight, Remus wakes up first because Sirius' breathing has become laboured and Remus has fallen into the pattern of waking at the slightest sound Sirius makes.

Outside - past haphazardly drawn curtains - Remus thinks that the sky should be an endless black, but instead it's tinted with oranges and browns and the corruptions of the world. Watery moonlight inks a path across the floorboards. In the bed, Sirius begins to shake.

Remus has grown used to recognizing the stages of Sirius' nighttime terrors - maybe because he too is woken by paintings carved onto his mind of blood on pale skin and screams which pierce even the thickest darkness - so as he shakes him awake, murmuring nonsensical words into Sirius' ear, he knows to keep his arms down to stop Sirius smashing the bedside lamp again; he knows the spot just above his hip that, with the right pressure, can call him down; he knows exactly every inch of Sirius Black's scar ridden body and he knows exactly how to keep him sane.

Sirius awakes and his eyes are wild with the edge of an animal burning in their depths but Remus keeps on holding him because at the end of the day, although they're both monsters but after you strip away the claws and fangs, all you've got left are two broken boys trying to find each other.

**1:45am**

Two hours and forty five minutes later finds them still wrapped around each other, eyes wide, terrified of closing them and having the relive the horrors all over again.

"What do you dream about?" Remus asks eventually because even though he knows the answer, against his will, his eyelids are beginning to droops and sleep is round the corner waiting with nightmares and paralysis and endless corridors.

"Blood," Sirius replies and his voice is dead and harsh in the stillness. "Gore, people dying. That kind of thing."

"Who would've thought," Remus comments, and the whole goddamn thing is so fucking ironic it makes his head hurt. "Sirius Black: afraid of blood."

Sirius' laugh is short and humorless. "But it's not just the blood, is it?"

"No. No, it's not."

"It's the screams and their faces just before they die. It's knowing that we weren't able to help them. That we're just fucking useless."

Tears are beginning to slip down Remus cheeks and he can feel Sirius' mark patterns in his back but neither of them say a word because they're in the middle the crossfire, and there was an unspoken agreement a long time again that they might not last long enough to cry again so it's better to get the tears out before it's all too late.

**2:15am**

"What do you think it'd be like to die?" Remus asks. They're lying in bed still, sheets strewn around their bare torsos. Sirius hands traces shapes into Remus' back. Every now and then he puts the letters together to make words.

_Marauders. Home. Hate. Harry. Love. I. You. Me. Us. Together._

"Rather morbid for three in the morning, don't you think?" Sirius replies, but even without looking at him, Remus knows the question has struck deep.

_No. No. No. NO. _

"On the contrary," Remus rolls over, until his face is inches away from Sirius and he can feel warm breath which smells of booze and cigarettes on his cheek. "It's the perfect time."

"Well," Sirius pauses, licking his lips. It's a nervous habit he's picked up recently. Probably something to do with all the passings of all their friends and the constant ghost of death hanging over their shoulders. "If you insist, I suppose it would depend. On how you die. Who you are. What you believe in."

"What do you think it would be like for you?"

"Hilarious," Sirius says without blinking. "It'd like to think I'll die laughing."

"Rather morbid for three in the morning, don't you think?" Remus shoots back.

"You started it," he grins. "Anyway, enough talk of death for one night. I can think of _far _more exciting topics."

"I'm sure," Remus replies, rolling onto his back but Sirius' lips are already on his and for now, he's lost to the world.

(As Sirius paints lines of poetry in kisses down Remus' back, he doesn't think till later he should have appreciated the irony in Sirius' words.)

**3:00am**

They make breakfast in the early hours because the constant cycle of crying and fucking and forgetting takes a lot out of them and definitely calls sugar highs at inappropriate times, although Sirius claims that there's no such thing as an inappropriate time for food. Their kitchen is small and entirely impractical so Remus has rather a lot more on his mind than pancakes as he stands at the stove, Sirius' arms wrapped around his waist.

"I'll burn them," Remus warns, attempting - with not much effort - to escape Sirius' grip.

"I don't care," Sirius says, his voice muffled by Remus' shoulder.

"Yeah, well." Remus flips the pancake. It lands in a crumpled mess on the hob. "You'll be complaining in a couple of hours when you're hungry and all my hard work is burnt or on the kitchen ceiling because of you."

"Never!" Sirius moves away, pulling what Remus can only assume is his idea of a mildly affronted face. "I never complain."

"Bullshit!" Remus replies, flipping the second pancake with rather more success. He leaves it sizzling in the pan as he turns back to Sirius. "All you ever do is complain."

"And all you ever do is complain about me complaining," Sirius concludes, catching Remus' waist again. "I'd say we're equal."

Remus is still trying to think up a reply when Sirius kisses him and all he can think about is _Sirius. _Every atom in his body screams his name until Remus shaking from the pressure of the kiss. He wraps his arms around Sirius, breathing in his everything, hands curling into his hair. Until–

Sirius pulls apart from Remus so quickly, it takes him a moment to fully register what Sirius is saying.

"Shit! The pancake's burnt!"

Remus hits Sirius with a tea towel.

**3:45am**

"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love–"

"He's a bit wet, this Darcy," Sirius interrupts, staring at the ceiling with a disgruntled look on his face. By his side, a candle flame flickers and flares, defining the arch of his lips and the spark of his eyes. "I don't know why he couldn't have just told her without all this flouncy crap."

"This _flouncy crap_," Remus explains, exasperated. "Is a gem of British muggle literature. _Pride and Prejudice_ is a classic."

"Well, it's not how I would have put it," Sirius argues.

"How would you have put it then?"

"Let's see," Sirius muses for a second. "Liz, darling, I would really rather like to fuck you at your earliest convenience, Darcy out, etcetera, etcetera."

"You're a bit of dick," Remus tells him. "I don't see why you can't just appreciate it."

"It's _boring_," Sirius replies. "The only mildly exciting bit was when Lydia ran away Wickham – who's my favourite character, by the way–"

"Well, he would be," Remus mumbles under his breath.

"–and now Darcy is almost as whipped as Bingley and it's all a bit ridiculous," Sirius concludes. "Can't you just tell me what happens?"

"It's not the same effect, you bastard!"

"Please?" Sirius pouts pathetically.

"Fine," Remus leafs mindlessly through the book. "Lizzy says no to the proposal–"

"She says _no_?" Sirius asks in amazement. "She's the only one in bloody Netherfield who won't accept their sexual tension! Maybe we ought to read the rest if Darcy is going to end up alone and even more miserable–"

"You're unbelievable."

"It's a talent."

"Anyway, she does say yes eventually. You can't hide from that sexual tension for ever."

"Ah, well, you're the top example for that," Sirius says, looking at Remus from the corner of his eye. "You'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Miss Bennet. You and your prejudice."

"It was actually Darcy who was prejudice," Remus replies. "And if I'm Lizzy then you'd be Darcy."

"The horror!" Sirius says, outraged snatching the book of Remus. "You're far more Darcy-ish. I'm the handsome, roguish Mr Wickham."

"Oh, so now there's an elicit affair between Darcy and Wickham?" Remus teases.

"Well," Sirius leans over Remus, so their faces are only centimeters apart and puts on a ridiculously pretentious accent. "With these _classics _you can never really know do you?"

Remus is still mumbling about how nothing can come between Darcy and Lizzy's love when Sirius closes the final gap and kisses him

**4:30am**

Sirius makes coffee.

He always make the coffee in the mornings - another unspoken arrangement - because Remus tends to make it too watery and Sirius likes to add extra cream and sugar. Remus always tries to protest that it's horrendously unhealthy but when Sirius replies, "fuck it, we're fighting a war" Remus shuts up.

They drink the coffee on the balcony, even though it's still dark, because the electric lights dotted across the city sets the skyline on fire. Sirius sits with a cigarette as he drinks the coffee and Remus charms the trail of grey smoke into shapes, sending them floating off towards the impending sunrise. He makes silly shapes at first - a dolphin, a flower, the Whomping Willow - but slowly they begin to change.

The silhouette of a girl who they both know, if she weren't made out of white smoke, would have bright read hair and green eyes which shone.

Then there's a castle - complete with turrets and spires - and it's a castle they both know oh so well and it brings a burning nostalgia to both their hearts because it's the one places they can call home.

Next Remus makes a broomstick which flies around their heads, zooming too and fro like an excitable bird.

And then, on Sirius' last drag, Remus waves his wand and four shapes begin to form. There's a rat and a dog and a stag and a wolf and they're all so familiar that it causes an unexplainable anger in Remus that so much has happened since they were just four school boys; anger because they'd never be able to be the careless, happy teenagers again,

They watch the four animals until Sirius' gaze grow hard - with regret, anger, longing - and he waves his hand, causing the four shapes to disappear into the first rays of the sun, lost to the beginning of the new day.

**1:00am**

From far away all he seems to be is a man. His body is curled around empty space, and his hands grab at the sheets, as if he's searching the static air around him for someone who isn't there anymore. There's a heartbreaking sort of desperation in the way his sleeping body moves - the way his chest heaves, his sleeping eyes twitch, his feet kick against empty space.

As he sleeps the man dreams and at first they're good dreams - memories, really - of pancakes, watery coffee, Jane Austen and crimson kisses. They're the times which keep going when his life seems to be crumbling down around him but the world still spins straight on it's axis. They're the times that he will remember for every waking moment until he's on his deathbed and those long, beautiful wasted nights are just faded murals on the wall of his mind.

But then then dreams change - nightmarish memories that he tries so hard to forget - and in his mind he's standing at the top of a very dark pit, and at it's base there's a man and a woman and the man has the kind of eyes which spark in candle light and the kind of smile which makes you fall in love. And of course, he's a man Remus has love over and over and over again and as he watches the two figures at the bottom of the bit, he's consumed the fiercest of all loves.

The love that screams protection and safety and forever.

But then, there's a flash of light between the figures - green; it's always green - and although Remus is so helpless and so far away, as the bolt of green light hits the the man and he falls backbackback into the veil behind him, Remus still hears that short burst of laughter Sirius promised him all those years ago.

And as he awakes - drenched in cold sweat - he still doesn't appreciate the irony.

(Instead he just holds himself, until the sun rises in the east, and Sirius smile has all but faded into the early morning light.)

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